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Crocodile's Immune System Kills HIV
ASEville writes "In an ongoing effort to stop the spread of HIV, scientists in Australia have discovered that crocodiles can fight off HIV and kill the virus. This is a major boon to medicine because the crocodile serum can also fight things that are penicillin resistant such as staphylococcus aureus."
Was carried out by Professor Wilkins in addition to HIV research he also is responsible for tractor mainentance.
Unpretentious Sydney reviews by unqualified Sydney reviewers
Now all we have to do is kill off all the crocodiles for the serum we need.
Good karma sticks to me like velcro on a piece of plexiglass.
Move along, citizen.
Antibiotics kill living bacteria. There isn't a single antibiotic that can disable a virus (like HIV), which isn't even alive.
The scientists probably hope to use modified crocodile immunoglobulin the same way we use animal-developed immunoglobulin as a tetanus antitoxin for patients who haven't been immunized... kind of a booster shot for patients fighting an HIV infection. The problem with animal-developed antibodies is that the human body recognizes them as foreign, and soon starts to mount an immune response against them as well.
Light a fire for a man and he'll be warm for a day. Light a man on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.
Now there's going to be ten posts about welcoming our crocodile-human hybrid overloards.
We prefer to be addressed as "Republicans".
"CRIKEY MATE, wouldnt want a take a hit from one of those!"
"See what the HIV does is just go, nene ne ne nene ne all about looking for its food. ne nene ne ne nene all day long BANG! fucken huge croc grabs him, drags him under, death roll. CHOMP CHOMP CHOMP end of story."
If I wasnt married.
serenity now!
Ich bin Schnappie, das kleine HIV-curing krokodil?
I know the /. commentor's don't read the articles submitted all the way to the end, so here's a bit towards the end that really matters:
Ummm.... So? The same thing can be said of chlorine bleach.
True, but since this agent doesn't kill or harm crocodiles there's a decent chance it'll be safe for humans.
There is nothing in the article to suggest that they have isolated the specific component that kills HIV, let alone determined that it is safe for human injection.
Very true. It's called research. You start with knowing very little, and eventually you might get something usefull. They're still at the knowing very little stage. Maybe they might get to the knowing a bit more stage sometime later.
I guess what I'm confused by is why you expected some announcement of a cure. Haven't you ever seen articles that talk about new research, breadcrumbs of information, etc? The answers don't arrive all in one big piece. This article merely talks about one stage of one search.
AccountKiller
! SITUATION! Your mom works as a paramedic saving people's lives. One night she rolls up on a multiple vehicle accident. A young girl, who is infected is trapped, your own mother, who is trying to help, cuts her arm while the blood of the girl is everywhere, so your mom gets infected, I guess with your attitude your mom just deserved it. Who is to blame though your mom or the INNOCENT girl's mom? You have a very perturbed view of this subject and should keep your mouth shut... and this is a very possible situation that could and probably has happened.
Ho, never thought I'd be the subject of a Slashdot news report.
Time to clarify things.
TFA contains a number of errors. First the statement I made about HIV is true, but as others have pointed out it does not mean we've found the cure for AIDS. It simply means that we've compared alligator serum and human serum and found the former significantly more effective at killing the HIV virus than human serum. It was intended to illustrate the overall efficacy of the crocodile / alligator immune system, that was all.
Second, these are not antibodies. Croc immune system works primarily through the innate or complement system, which does not involve antibodies. It's a simpler and more primitive immune response than the adaptive immune system that is key for mammals, but the advantage is that it's very direct and hence difficult for bacteria etc to evolve resistance to. It's "primitive" nature may be behind its effectiveness.
The main finding here is that the alligator / crocodile immune system is far more effective at killing a wider range of bacteria (gram +ve and gram -ve), viruses and fungi than our own immune system. When you've evolved over 235 million years, and your daily social behaviour involves biting limbs off other crocs, you need a good immune system! It clearly has potential medical implications down the line, but that's a long way off yet. First we have to fully understand what makes croc immunity tick. We are still trying to purify a protein which we believe is an antimicrobial peptide, but hopefully that will happen very soon after this recent work.
Eventually if anything does come of this, and we can isolate a "factor" that has human medical implications (and is safe for humans, unlike the far more effective chlorine bleach) it would indeed be synthesised. Adam Britton
This scam fed off our initial pilot study findings, back in 1998. There was worldwide media exposure at the time because of the demonstrated ability of the croc serum against antibiotic-resistant bacteria (S. aureus). They used this media coverage in a weak attempt to add credibility to their product.
Yes, we have tried suing them (mainly for defamation, because they claim we endorse this crap) but it's very difficult to sue companies that apparently don't exist.
Adam Britton
Er, why is research only valid if it comes from an academic institution? Crocodylus Park (the name for the facility run by Wildlife Management International, of which I am an employee) is run by professional biologists who just happen to also run a tourism faclitity to get science across to the public. The fact that we're private doesn't have anything to do with the quality of our research - we still publish in peer-reviewed journals so it's open to international scrutiny like any other research.
We're also collaborating with McNeese State University in Louisiana for this project.
Adam Britton
Correct, this is what we're talking about primarily. The news article was wildly inaccurate and embarrassing to read quite frankly!
We don't talk about defensins because we're not sure yet that defensins are involved. We suspect they are, but until we purify and sequence the proteins we're looking at we can't be sure. Hopefully this is only weeks away.
The answer to your lack of understanding is going to school and learning how things actually work. Not constructing theories about it because you watched a program on the Discovery channel. I mean this in a constructive way, because what you are saying is not related to reality at all and that is worrying. "Some kind of internal problem" means you are not really qualified to speak on the subject in an authoritative manner, really. There is nothing wrong in admitting you don't know something. There's a vast amount of stuff I don't know. Disease is something I am an expert on, though. It goes with the job, really.
First, it's asbestos, not azbestos. Second, asbestos has been linked to mesothelioma, not lung cancer. Asbestosis in the lung is no fun at all, but you don't get lung cancer. The mesothelioma is a cancer of the pleura, a membrane that is next to the lung, not the lung itself. Third, asbetos is an irritant that your lung cannot get rid of. This constant source of irritation causes the release of chemicals by nearby cells called growth factors. The constant local exposure to growth factors is one of the things that "takes off the brakes" in the cell cycle, and this, combined with mutations, causes the start of the cancer. Not everyone exposed to asbestos will get cancer from it. You need to have the initiation step (the mutation) as well as the promotion step (the exposure to growth factors). Fourth, this has absolutely nothing to do with HIV and AIDS.
Now to address the other part of your argument.
The HIV virus is an RNA virus. This RNA is changed to DNA by an enzyme called reverse transcriptase, that comes with the virus. This DNA can and IS merged with our own DNA. It becomes a fundamental part of you. When it's like this, there is no way I can get rid of it without killing the cell.
Some infected cells start to produce copies of the virus, and they eventually die. Other "healthy" cells are infected with the virus DNA, but those genes are not currently expressed. We're still not sure what causes a cell to suddenly switch the virus production switch to "on", and when we know this we will be one step closer to curing this disease. Still other cells (the macrophages) are capable of being infected by the HIV virus, and producing a limited amount of copies of this virus. The macrophages are not normally wiped out by this, but all you need is one copy of the virus to re-infect the whole T helper cell colony again.
So we have: 1) cells that die quickly 2) cells that take a long time to get sick and die and 3) cells than never die from the disease, but are capable of re-infecting you at any time.
This explains why HIV is a chronic infection, unlike the common cold, or viruses that cause diarrhoea which are SO aggressive they basically kill ALL the cells within days, and run out of hosts. With HIV, you create new, healthy hosts a lot quicker than the infection can kill them. But these hosts are getting constantly infected. Eventually the amount of infected cells and virus production is so great that cells are infected and die the moment they are produced or become active. This is when you get AIDS because the immune system is now collapsing.
You may not know how HIV works, but we certainly do. Billions of dollars of research money were NOT wasted. In the 1980's we knew almost nothing about how any virus worked. But with HIV there's not much that can be done about it BECAUSE of the way it works. Maybe one day we will find a better way of attacking the virus directly before it gets into the cells. We're not there yet though.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Well Mr Angostura, you're as bitter as your namesake aren't you?
First of all, if it isn't clear that this news report is crammed full of factual errors, then perhaps it isn't obvious that what I said may have been completely misquoted? After all, the guy almost had me describing a new type of "crocodile antibodies"! This was "quoted" from a phone interview where I could hear the journalist typing in the background, so it's hardly a direct quote. The only part I definitely said word for word was the "gun to the head" line.
And I'm not Australian, by the way (not yet at least) so I have no idea how to operate a sheep dip.
Yes, we did discover an antimicrobial peptide (probably a defensin) several years ago. This is a continuation of that research.
Adam Britton
One final comment on this - I need to vent! Bear in mind that these news reports are *way* off the mark in their reporting. The vast majority simply copied the Reuters article and diluted the facts yet further.
It was Reuters who picked up on the HIV aspect and blew it out of proportion. It was never the goal of the study to combat HIV - it was just an interesting test. They even managed to misquote me almost completely. The main focus has been the antibacterial properties of the blood.
Also, the part about the immune system being "too powerful" is something they pulled out of their cloaca. We're quite aware, as scientists, that it's far too early to start talking about marketable antibacterial drugs. The various factors that provide crocs with their powerful immune systems may not have any safe human medical use whatsoever. The fact that they *could*, however, is obviously interesting, but too many people here are taking this dodgy news report too literally. Don't get me wrong - this is exciting stuff and it could have health benefits down the line, but I don't like seeing this work getting misrepresented like this.
There are peer-reviewed papers out there (check Merchant, principal author) and this work is being written up at the moment (check Merchant and Britton). They'll be far more informative than anything you'll read in the paper.
Incidentally, we can't submit this to Nature because back in 1998 we did a pilot study, the lid of which was blown off from an unexpected source in a fit of excitement! So it's far too late for that - croc's out of the bag, etc...
Adam Britton
It's no fun aimlessly ranting on Slashdot if the experts involved are going to come along and correct us. Please move along and allow us to go back to explaining why you're wrong, thanks.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?